The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to an application-policy-based virtual Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller that provides for the routing of application communications for a particular application through an SDN network and between information handling systems.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems such as, for example, servers and storage systems, typically communicate with each other and/or client devices via networks that include networking devices such as switches that route those communications. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an approach to networking that allows network administrators to programmatically initialize, control, change, and manage network behavior dynamically via open interfaces and the abstraction of lower-level functionality. Conventional non-SDN networking provides relatively static architectures that do not support dynamic, scalable computing and storage needs of modern computing environments such as datacenters, and SDN addresses such issues by decoupling the control plane (which makes decision about where communications are sent) from the data plane (which forward communications to their desired destination.) Conventional SDN systems provide physical SDN controller(s) that are coupled to the switches in the SDN network and that operate to provide rules to those switches for forwarding traffic. However, while such conventional physical SDN controllers provide for general purpose flow control, they include no behavioral understanding or other intelligence of how to manage network parameters, traffic, access, and/or other characteristics of communications between users of particular applications, application types, or applications with particular characteristics. As such, the routing of network traffic in conventional SDN systems cannot easily be optimized for particular application communications provided via SDN networks.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved SDN controller system.